


the kick won't last for long

by seijoh



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Miraculous Ladybug Angst Week, minimal romance, not really tho lol, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 07:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10657542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seijoh/pseuds/seijoh
Summary: the slight grin is out of place, but he supposes that it’s the only thing that hasn’t driven him insane yet. nino has to focus on the little things, the everyday things that he’d taken for granted, so his mind doesn’t wander down a road he doesn’t exactly want to cross yet.then the sky begins to bleed violet and a purple beam shoots a column of light from the eleventh arrondissement, and nino starts to think that he’d crossed that road from the moment he first put the miraculous on.or, the final battle and the aftermath.





	the kick won't last for long

**Author's Note:**

> title: "ugh!" by the 1975
> 
> story takes place after adrien, marinette, alya, chloé, and nino have revealed their identities to each other, but no one is in a relationship with anyone yet. they're all eighteen and in high school at this point.
> 
> written for miraculous angst week, day one: ~~mistakes or~~ aftermath  
>  _unedited_

Everything starts and ends on the same day, when the sun is high in the sky with puffy cotton clouds floating aimlessly around and it seems like nothing can go wrong. And then it does, because Adrien’s luck is absolute _shit_.

A flash of lightning burns through the clouds, breaking off in a thousand different sparks and setting the sky aflame with the purplish glow. Thunder, always trailing behind, rumbles through the sky with a deafening growl. It’s a fact that will always remain true, no matter what happens: _Where there is lightning, thunder will always follow._ He thinks that Chat Noir and Ladybug are like that too, in their own strange way, because he’ll follow Ladybug to the ends of the earth and back. He’ll claw his way out of hell to keep her safe. This time, though, he’s the first one on the scene, perched and waiting on the top of the Notre Dame.

But it’s not just the two of them anymore, and it’s not only Adrien watching Marinette’s back. They’ve got Jade Turtle and Abeille and Volpina, and they’re a _team_. They protect each other with everything they have, with a sort of tenacity forged only in fire and in blood, and Adrien has to wonder if it’d been easier if they’d stayed as a duo instead of a group of five.

Because now there’s more to lose. Now, there’s more things to hurt for.

* * *

Marinette, being the latest incarnation of a superhero based in luck, supposes that it’s a small consolation that the apocalypse begins right before her math midfinal. Still, the sky is falling (exaggeration), her teacher is freaking out (slight exaggeration), and the world is ending ( _not_ an exaggeration). She sneaks out of the room with a practiced sort of slipperiness that avoids any watchful eyes and discreetly transforms in an alley just outside of lycée with a flash of red and pink. She pulls out her yo-yo, swinging it back and forth until she gets a steady twirl, and glances back at the high school one last time.

With a brand foresight that must have come from Jade’s kwami, she gives the building a sad smile. If she comes back— _when_ , she corrects herself, because it’s always better to be optimistic when walking towards something that might end up killing you—Marinette won’t be the same person. Still young, but so much older. Wiser.

But there are things worth fighting for, things worth sacrificing her childhood and the naivete that accompanies it for, and Marinette will give her dying breath to protect them.

* * *

Chloè has never been brave. She has never been courageous or gallant or stouthearted or _anything_ that a thesaurus can conjure up that means close to the same thing.

But she’s loyal, fiercely protective of those she loves, and love doesn’t come close to explaining why she feels a chasm pitting her stomach when she thinks of losing any one of them. Love doesn’t tell Chloè why she feels like throwing up after a nightmare where they realize she isn’t worth their time or friendship. Love doesn’t protect her friends. But Abeille can.

She joins Marinette out of the classroom, like a shadow trailing its source, and Chloè can feel Alya and Nino following suit. This is it. She can feel it, deep in her bones like an old rattling that shakes her to the very core. This is their last fight together.

Chloè doesn’t know why that thought makes her feel so awful, so lightheaded and unstable on her feet, but she thinks that love might have something to do with it.

* * *

Alya swings her flute like a baseball bat, wincing slightly as she watches the akuma crumple into an odd form. It won’t be comfortable when he’ll wake up, but at least it’s better than hurting him any more than just knocking him unconscious. She’ll give it her all, like she always does, but Alya knows somewhere deep down that she’ll have to sacrifice more than that to win.

“Jade!” she shouts, her voice somehow strong enough to carry over the chaos around them and to the rooftops. Volpina’s heart stutters once she notices the gash running down Jade Turtle’s arm. It doesn’t look too deep, but then again, she can’t exactly very well give an exact assessment from so far away. “Third Arrondissement needs more cover. I’ve got it here.”

Nino nods, brief but not unkind, and starts running towards the Panthéon in the east. Raising the instrument to her lips, Alya watches his retreating form get smaller and smaller until he disappears in the ruination taking place around them. She can only hope that her illusions will cover him long enough that he’ll get there safely.

* * *

Everything _hurts_ , but Nino keeps pushing forward anyway, ignoring the burning in his lungs and the stinging in his left arm. With the twenty districts divided between the five of them, Jade and Volpina had been given responsibility of everything on the left bank of the Seine, while Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Abeille had taken the right. It was a haphazard division that left them in charge of fourteen arrondissements, but it had been working so far.

Pulling his arm back, he throws his shield and knocks down four akuma at once. It makes him smile, just a little bit, remembering how Alya had been so excited to receive a limited edition copy of the early Captain America comics. The slight grin is out of place, but he supposes that it’s the only thing that hasn’t driven him insane yet. Nino has to focus on the little things, the everyday things that he’d taken for granted, so his mind doesn’t wander down a road he doesn’t exactly want to cross yet.

Then the sky begins to bleed violet and a purple beam shoots a column of light from the Eleventh Arrondissement, and Nino starts to think that he’d crossed that road from the moment he first put the Miraculous on.

* * *

Of _course_ Hawkmoth would target the most densely populated district of Paris. Chat Noir has to admit that it’s a sound strategy, because while he and the others won’t risk civilians, Hawkmoth has no such reservations about keeping people safe. It’s all a big chess game, he thinks, where every move could end in a death and a misstep could ruin everything. It’s a haunting and pessimistic thought, albeit a realistic one, and Chat Noir makes a face of grim determination as he uses his baton to launch himself westward towards the light pillar.

_They will win. Even if it kills him._

* * *

Marinette sprints into a building without looking to see what it’s for, one of the few that remain mostly intact. Most of the others are crumbling into ruins or have been set aflame by one of the dozens of akuma running around, but Ladybug can’t do more than knock them out cold or risk being stuck as Marinette when Paris needs her as Ladybug to fight Hawkmoth.

“Mari?”

It’s a small voice that cracks at the end, almost like they’re going to cry, but Marinette _knows_ that voice intimately. Eyes wide in shock, she turns around and hopes her franticness doesn’t bleed into her tone.

“ _Maman—_ ”

“Marinette?” Sabine sinks to her knees, taking in her daughter’s disheveled appearance—her knotted hair, having long since fallen out of their neat ponytails; her dirt-smudged face, an effect of having rolled on the pavement to soften the blow of her fall after being knocked off a balcony; her torn suit… “ _Ladybug?_ ”

She looks at her mother, pleading with blue eyes and a broken soul. “Maman, please, I have to go—”

As if snapped out a catatonic state, Sabine glances outside and purses her lips at the sight of destruction laid out before the two. She swallows thickly and prays to whatever deity who will listen that her daughter will return home one last time. “Go. Save Paris.”

Marinette gives her mother a sad smile. “ _Je t’aime, Maman._ See you soon.”

Not a goodbye, but not exactly a promise to come back either.

“See you soon, _chérie_. Be safe.”

* * *

Abeille runs the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away the blood from her lips. She’d bitten them earlier to keep from crying out in pain when an akuma had gotten a particularly lucky hold on her, twisting her arm and dislocating her shoulder. The pain had subsided slightly after she’d gotten used to it, but her right hand was practically useless. With a dark grin, Abeille lets her trompo zip across the asphalt and trip five akuma in a row. _It’s a lucky thing that I’m ambidextrous._

Volpina slides down a rooftop, loose shingles falling to the road as she jumps off a balcony and onto the ground. “You okay? Your arm seems—”

“ _I’m fine_ ,” Abeille bites stiffly before cursing herself. All this time, and she still can’t hold a proper conversation without a bitter remark.

Luckily, Volpina only rolls her eyes before repeating herself. “ _What’s wrong?_ ”

“Dislocated shoulder,” she says, gritting her teeth in pain. “I can make it work, though.”

Volpina’s eyes widen slightly before she says softly, “I can set it for you. If you want, I mean.”

Chloé looks at Volpina, at the girl she knows lays underneath that domino mask, and wonders if there’s something else to the lilt of Alya’s voice. Something _more_. Then, the clouds begin to rumble again and the thunderclaps begin to rise in volume until they’re almost deafening. They’re fighting the last leg of a war at the moment, and there isn’t any time to be sentimental. Not yet, at least.

“I’d like that,” Chloé says, “please.”

* * *

Alya tries to ignore the burning that settles on her fingertips where she’d touched Abeille, running up and down her arm like a flame that refuses to be put out, and focus on her job. But it slowly gets harder to think as thoughts of a certain blonde overtake her mind, so Alya _doesn’t_ ignore it. Instead she uses it as fuel, easily cutting down more and more champions that Hawkmoth sends their way.

* * *

Later, Nino will say that all he can remember from that day is being blinded by the violet beams that shoot throughout Paris like a murderous disco ball, but in reality, there’s no way in hell that he’ll ever forget what happens once Hawkmoth grabs Ladybug in a chokehold. (In reality, the _real_ fight is more anticlimatic and yet so much worse than what he says. It doesn’t even happen in the Eleventh, where the lights are from. Instead, it’s the Seventh, ironically atop the Eiffel Tower and overlooking Paris.) It seems like time slows down into nothingness, as if every movement is dragged down like they’re in jelly. Turtle knows that this isn’t his doing, that his kwami wouldn’t betray him by making something as simple as _blinking_ infinitely harder, so there’s something malicious at work in the air. Or maybe it’s not as complicated as Miraculous magic. Maybe it’s just shock settling in their tired bones. In all honesty, they’re only children, and eighteen is far too young to see the things they have. Maybe it’s catching up to them.

Ladybug is fast, but for once, Hawkmoth is faster and his thin fingers grab onto her arm as his face twists into a cruelly delighted sneer. “Looks like you’re out of luck.”

Jade Turtle wants to rankle him further, wants to say that he’d take an eternity of Chat Noir’s god-awful puns than another one of Hawkmoth’s shittier replications, but his mouth won’t move from the slightly agape state it’s in. Never did the possibility that they would _lose_ enter his head, but maybe that was stupid of him. He held the kwami of foresight, after all. Shouldn’t he have thought ahead?

A scream rips its way out of Chat Noir’s throat as he falls to his knees, strangled and painful to even listen to. He looks like a fallen prince, the purple light casting shadows on his face and a snarl on his lips. “ _Don’t fucking touch her._ ”

Nino has never known Adrien as one to curse, but he supposes that if the situation they’re in now doesn’t warrant one, nothing ever will. He recognizes the twitch in Chat Noir’s muscles, knows he’s about to move, and quickly restrains him before he can do anything they’ll regret later. Abeille wraps her arm around Chat’s torso in an attempt at assistance. _Think first, do later_ was one of the things Wayzz had drilled into him, but right now, Jade is fairly certain that Adrien isn’t thinking much out of the way of saving Marinette.

“Let her go,” Alya says, her voice low and dangerous. Her eyes are knife-tipped glares strong enough to wither someone with a glance, and Nino looks on with sick satisfaction as he sees Hawkmoth waver for a second.

Hawkmoth replies with a grin with too much teeth that makes him look more like a predator to even resemble anything close to sincerity. “I’m sorry, little girl, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ve been fighting this war for too long to be stopped by _children_.”

Then, faster than the lightning crackling in the sky behind him, Hawkmoth pulls out a knife and cuts.

* * *

There is nothing but the sound of Ladybug’s agony ringing in his mind as Chat Noir breaks free of his teammates’ hold and sprints towards Hawkmoth. It’s a blur of silver steel whirring through the air against a purple-clad form, and Adrien is seeing red as he swings his baton down on Hawkmoth’s head with a sickening crack. It’s not enough to kill him, but more than enough to put him out of commission.

Glancing behind him, without her earrings, the costume had faded away and left Marinette behind, her head resting on Alya’s lap and unconscious from the pain. Tikki had flown out, buzzing softly around her charge, and her murmured words were too soft for Adrien to hear over the howling winds atop the Eiffel. But even the kwami was too weak to fly around for long and settled for simply sitting on Alya’s lap beside Marinette’s head. It was like something out of a nightmare, and Adrien sank to his knees beside Volpina and Abeille just as Jade Turtle stood up.

“I’ll keep the reporters away from here,” he says flatly, clearly shaken from what he’d just seen. Adrien can’t blame him; he’s still in shock too.

Abeille nods and detransforms in a flurry of yellow glitter, and Adrien winces at the brightness that assaults his eyes, though he and Volpina follow suit quickly enough.

“What do we do?” falls out of his mouth before he can stop it, and Adrien wants to hit himself for how _weak_ he sounds.

Plagg is uncharacteristically silent, much too somber for Adrien’s liking. “I don’t know, kid.”

* * *

“You alright?” Chloé asks, wincing as the words leave her mouth. _Of course he’s not alright_ , she chides herself, _He just lost his father to a corrupted kwami._

Adrien hums in reply. Not an answer, but at least he isn’t ignoring her.

The tension between them is palpable, and it settles on her tongue with a sour aftertaste when she opens her mouth to speak and the words won’t come. _Just like Father didn’t come when I was admitted_ , her mind bitterly adds.

Nino was talking to one of the nurses outside, asking her if they could take their lunches in here with Adrien, but Chloé hates the pearly look in Adrien’s empty eyes. She wishes there was something she could do to bring that light back into them, but broken things can’t fix anything and she’s as shattered as they come.

The chime of her phone cuts through the silence like a knife. It’s a text from Alya, and the thought makes Chloé smile despite it all. _Marinette’s awake._

When she relays the message to Adrien, for the first time in a week, he smiles.

* * *

Marinette wakes up in the hospital surrounded by flowers that seem to drown her in their petals. Her head feels awful, spinning the room slightly off-kilter, like one side of her head is heavier than the other, and the bright overhead lights aren’t doing much in the way to help.

“Mari?”

She glances to her right where Alya sits on the uncomfortable single-seater couches the hospital offers, her knees pulled under her and her eyes shining with obvious worry. There’s a standing IV next to her, clear wires pumping some sort of medicine into Alya’s arm.

Marinette offers a small smile and an awkward wave. “Hey.”

The air between them feels so tense, and it makes her heart pound in her chest so loudly that she can actually _hear_ it.

“How are you feeling?” Alya whispers.

“Like I was just hit by a truck,” Marinette says, trying to laugh it off with a slight chuckle and ignoring the burning in her lungs starts once she laughs.

But Alya knows her all too well, and she shoots her best friend an incredulous look says she doesn’t believe a single lie that Marinette tries to feed her. “Just….” She sighs. “Take it easy, alright? Chloé, Nino, and I weren’t too bad off, but…” Alya fumbles with her words, and it’s a sight that makes Marinette uncomfortable. The blogger was usually so eloquent that seeing her as anything else gives her a sense of uneasiness that sinks deep into her bones. “You and Adrien had it pretty rough.”

She immediately sits up straight, but the pain makes her hiss through her teeth. Alya moves to help her, but Marinette asks, “Where is he?”

“Next room over,” Alya explains. “Nino and Chloé are with him. Your parents are getting food and a change of clothes for us. Mine and Nino’s are supposed to come over later.”

“They know? About….us and what we are?”

Alya nods. “Yeah.”

Marinette sucks in a breath, her mind wandering to when she’d run into her mother during the fight, before she remembers something. “Where’s Tikki?”

The brunette’s eyes widen in a panic before Alya schools her face into a placating one of neutrality. Her ‘Journalist Face’, as Nino calls it, but it’s too late and Marinette has already seen the change. “Mari—”

“ _Where’s Tikki?_ ”

“Hawkmoth….cut off part of your right earlobe to get the Miraculous,” Alya explains softly, “Your left is fine, but we talked to Plagg and he said that you can get it back if you get a piercing somewhere else in your ear. But for now….”

“No Tikki,” Marinette finishes, a hollow feeling settling in her stomach.

 _There’s hope_ , she tells herself, _You can get the Miraculous back, and it won’t even be that hard. Just another piercing._ But it’s not the loss of her ear that digs the chasm inside of her; rather, it’s the fact that she won’t be able to hold her friend and relish in the comfort of her kwami when she needs it the most.

The door opens, and the curtain is pushed away, revealing Chloé and Adrien. Marinette feels her heart stop at the sight of the two of them in hospital gowns, rumpled and so _human_ that she can’t reconcile people in front of her with her mental image of the blondes looking perfectly dressed—even though she’s seen them in worse conditions. The thing that wraps her lungs in a vice and pulls all breath away from her are much different than their appearances—the cast running up and down Chloé’s arm….and Adrien, in a wheelchair.

* * *

Nino manages to guilt trip the nurse into letting the five of them have lunch together. Something about pulling the _We Just Saved Paris, So You Kind Of Owe Us_ Card made everything go smoother.

They eat in Marinette’s room, stuffing ashy hospital food into their mouths with mechanical motions and tense smiles. The kwami sit on the bedside table, huddled together and talking in soft voices like they have been for the past week or so. It feels odd to Nino, seeing Nooroo there and _not_ attacking him. Then again, he figures it isn’t the kwami’s fault that he was misused.

“This is stupid,” Nino says, shattering the thin layer of ice that had slowly blanketed them, “We’re _friends_ . We’re _teammates_. There’s no reason why we should be acting so awkward around each other.”

“Yeah,” Marinette says softly, raising a hand to touch the bandage on her ear. “Teammates.”

* * *

They told Adrien it was a temporary blindness—most likely gone in a month, if everything went smoothly enough—though the cause itself was unknown. He knows better. After all, it’d Plagg had been the one to tell him that whenever a kwami is used to take a life, the Miraculous is corrupted until another purified it. But unlike akumas, any Miraculous user could purify it—at a cost. For Adrien, apparently, the price had been his sight. Alya, Chloé, and Nino had all offered in his place, but Adrien had insisted that it had to be him. After all, he had a debt to pay the city of Paris in his father’s place.

So Adrien uses his inheritance to get the best lawyers money can buy, anything to convict his father and keep him in a prison far away. He’d only talked to his father once after the fight ended, before the National Police had dragged Gabriel away in iron and steel, and Adrien had said only one thing.

_“Why?”_

Then, his father’s lips had turned up in a crooked smile while his eyes remained icy. “For you. For your mother. _For us._ ”

Adrien hates the way the memory of his father still stirs up a confusing whirl of emotions inside of him, when all that should be there is contempt. Instead, he’s six years old and wishing for his father to hug him. He’s eleven years old and wanting someone to hang out with. He’s fourteen and hoping that Gabriel will give them both the day off. But right now, Adrien Agreste is eighteen years old and utterly alone.

Alya shoots a sharp reply at something Chloé says, but there’s something else in her tone that isn’t quite as bladed. Marinette smiles so bright he can _feel_ it without even seeing. Nino makes a joke, and they all laugh. Adrien joins in their laugh and knows that Chloé is giving him a look that says, _Welcome back._

Maybe, he thinks, he isn’t _alone_.

* * *

“When were you going to tell us?” Tom says. He isn’t angry, but Marinette can’t read him. She almost wishes he _were_ , because at least that way, she’d know what they were feeling.

“I—” The words trip over her tongue, and she coughs once to clear the feeling of phlegm gathering in her throat. “I don’t know. Maybe sometime after....everything.”

“We’re not mad, _chérie_ ,” Sabine says kindly, but there’s something sad in the way she speaks, “Just worried that you thought you couldn’t trust us with something this big.”

Tom wraps an arm around his wife. “We will _always_ support you, Marinette, but you have to tell us. In case something happens, you need to tell us.”

Marinette doesn’t realize she’s crying until she tastes the salt gathering on her lips. “Okay,” she says softly. “ _Okay_.”

* * *

“Thank you,” Chloé says, exhaling shakily, “for coming with me.”

Alya shoots the blonde a smile and tangles their fingers together. “Always.”

Le Grand Paris stands as an imposing sight with the sun behind it, all sharp angles and scarlet banners that remind Chloé of all the blood she’d seen that night. They walk in together, hand in hand, and Chloé relishes in the quiet strength that Alya seems to exude from her small frame.

André Bourgeois stands in the lobby, hands clasped together behind his back and a tight smile pulling his face taut. “Chloé!”

“Father.” Her voice is curt, but she can’t bring herself to care about the fact that she’s being rude. Mrs. Lahiffe, the Dupain-Chengs, Marlena Césaire...they’d all visited at the hospital. They’d each taken the time to support their children—taken the time off of work because they sincerely believed that their babies were more important than money.

But André Bourgeois had told Chloé that he couldn’t leave the hotel because the revenue loss would be too great to handle and sent a vase of roses to the hospital. The wrong room, no less, and the very flowers she hated the most. She’s nothing but another pawn to keep him in power, and Chloé doesn’t know how she didn’t notice it earlier.

“Chloé—” he begins, feigning hurt at her brusque introduction.

“I’m moving out,” she says before he can twist his words into making her stay. “I’d like to ask you to move my things into my new apartment, though if you find yourself unable to, I’m sure I could find the finances to have it done myself.”

A sneer twists her father’s face, and Chloé feels Alya’s grip tighten in worry. “And where do you think you’ll find the funds? _From me?_ ”

“Marinette and I will be rebuilding the Gabriel brand from scratch, and we’ll also be converting Agreste Mansion into an orphanage,” Chloé says, struggling to keep her voice neutral. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to send any roses this time.”

* * *

She should have known from the very beginning that it couldn’t have lasted forever, but Alya isn’t ready for the end to arrive. Her birthday had been yesterday, but this feels like the worst present in the world. After all, how did you say goodbye to something you weren’t ready to let go of?

“I can feel you thinking.”

Alya turns to Trixx and gives her kwami a rueful smile. “First time for everything, right?”

Trixx laughs, but there’s something else to it that makes tears form in the corner of Alya’s eyes. “Come on, writer girl,” the kwami says. “Chin up. Don’t cry. You’re gonna do some great stuff, you know.”

“Wish you could see it though,” Alya says, and she curses the way her voice sounds so small, so weak, like she’s a child talking to their mother after a nightmare. “Wish you could stay.”

Glancing over, Marinette is already crying, though there’s a bright smile that makes her glow amidst the tears. Alya knows the feeling of getting attached to something you know you can’t keep, how it makes you love it that much more so the pain is even greater when it leaves.

“I wish I could stay too, writer girl,” Trixx replies, “but the Miraculous don’t work that way.”

“I love you,” Alya says. Because she does. She loves this kwami in a way she can’t quite explain, like it’s somehow both an extension of her and a prosthetic.

Trixx places a soft kiss on Alya’s cheek, right where the first tear falls, and flies back into the necklace. Alya feels empty and whole, all at once.

* * *

Nino knows it’s a bit foolish to come out here at night, what with those new monsters wandering around, but he’s always been nostalgia’s puppet and this is a wistfulness of the strongest kind. The statues stand in a circle, backs facing each other and bravely standing guard over Paris, and the walkway culminates in a little garden in the center. It’s a memorial, built before the new five ever came, but now it’s more of an honor type of thing. But to Nino, it’ll always be a memorial—a memorial of his childhood and a memorial of _them_.

“Knew you’d be here,” Adrien says, walking up beside him in a ensemble that makes Nino speculate that Marinette had been the one to dress Adrien today. For all the boy’s looks, his sense of fashion rivalled an old man’s for lack of style. It’s no wonder his students adore him; he dresses like a dork. His glasses reflect the lights that shine on the marble faces of the five figures.

Marinette appears beside Adrien, her nose pink from the biting cold and moving to put one of her sketchbooks inside of her bag.  “I have to say, even with all those pictures they took, they don’t look anything like the real deal.”

Chloé huffs, her breath turning to wispy white clouds in the air. She towers over most of them in her black stilettos, but Adrien still keeps an inch or two to himself as the tallest of the bunch. “They might’ve gotten my nose wrong, but at least my hair looks great.”

“Do you think they’ve even noticed the change?” Alya laughs, adjusting the straps of her messenger bag so they don’t dig into her shoulder so much. He wonders if she’s changed her laptop yet.

The five of them stay quiet for a heartbeat. Then another.

It takes a whole minute before Nino turns around. He trains his eyes on one of the rooftops, their shadowy silhouettes quickly disappearing after realizing they’d been seen. “A few of them probably have.”


End file.
